Wracked with angst over the fate of our beloved and horribly misgoverned Republic, the DiploMad returns to do battle on the world wide web, swearing death to political correctness, and pulling no punches.

Featured Post

We live in a time of government by con men, women, and those of flexible and reassignable gender. In the last few days this bitter truth ha...

Monday, August 10, 2015

The Weirdness, Oh, the Weirdness: The Hillary Campaign

This is a sort of jazz-equivalent post. Random notes in search of a theme.

I have admitted not being good at the political punditry game. Never have been. I, for example, thought that Mitt Romney would make a better president than Barack Obama, and for a brief moment thought Romney would win. I also voted for Sarah Palin in 2008--and her running mate, whoever that was--and thought she would have been better than Biden--and his running mate, whoever that was. I sure know how to pick 'em. The voters, at least lately, don't agree with me very often. I find myself shunned from polite company because of my punditry efforts--or perhaps because I never have seen a Star Wars, James Bond, X-Men, or Mission Impossible movie?

Anyhow, not to be deterred, my domestic politics punditry efforts continue. Today I express my amazement about one candidate, yes, my old boss, Hillary Clinton. The polls (here, for example) make me wonder, "How?" In nearly if not every poll, Clinton beats just about any GOP candidate. I see those polls, and while, of course, I am sure the "science" behind them is impeccable--as voters in Greece, UK, and Wisconsin recently discovered--but still notice that they don't respond to reality in my little world. Who are these Hillary Clinton fans? I have yet to meet anybody--outside of one ultra-liberal State Department employee--who thinks she would make a good president. I have the same issue with polling about Jeb Bush. I have met him, like him as a person, but have not met anybody who says he wants him as president; yet the poll numbers put him right up next to Trump. Who are the people getting polled? (Readers: Insert off color joke here about the American people getting polled/poled.)

Let's look at Hillary Clinton. She has a very long history of living large and in the public eye and accomplishing . . . nothing. Nothing as First Lady of Arkansas--except to serve as laundress for bribes--nothing as FLOTUS, nothing as Senator, and nothing as SecState. She has depended on her roguish husband to provide her a "career." She has endured all sorts of humiliations from him but has stuck with him to get wealth and power. That's it. Nothing else. She has shown herself as without a sense of shame, and has no apparent requirement that people around her have a moral compass--she certainly doesn't have one. She has surrounded herself with compliant, amoral yet ruthless toadies who treat her as she treats her husband, i.e., as a vehicle to wealth and power. For Hillary and her acolytes, Hillary is their north.

As First Lady she proved an egomaniacal disaster, who wanted "to be somebody." She tried to impose a weird--even stranger than Obamacare--health insurance scheme on the US; her "little" project, horribly mismanaged, sunk ignominiously out of sight and should have taken her political aspirations with it. As noted, she passed unnoticed as Senator. I have written before about my encounter with her in one of her early forays into foreign affairs; she continued that pattern of "it's all about me" while Secretary of State, and had zero accomplishments in that job. Let me modify that: zero accomplishmentsof benefit to the USA. She proved wonderfully productive for the Muslim world's Jihadis, Iran's Ayatollahs, Cuba's Castros, Venezuela's Chavez, and Russia's Putin. In sum, throughout it all, she has shown herself as a incompetent manager, a lousy leader, as well as a habitual liar, crook, and highly vindictive practitioner of the politics of personal destruction--ask Bill's "bimbos."

Her current presidential campaign is bizarre or brilliant, or both. It seems to be a hit-and-run guerrilla campaign in which the candidate rarely appears, takes almost no questions, gives opaque statements worthy of the Oracle of Delphi or an astrology chart, and has her staff issue little Tweeter bolts every so often. She hides most of the time behind a gaggle of spokesmen who lie about and rewrite her scandal-ridden history. Perhaps we can better described it as a version of "rope-a-dope." Let everybody throw what they've got at her now, and since our presidential campaigns have become so absurdly long, by the time we get to voting, nobody will remember or care. I can hear the line, "That's old news," bandied about in the future whenever somebody raises something about her past--as though "old" means "irrelevant." In addition, she has well-placed media whores who do their best to ensure that "scandal eruptions" remain under control. Democrat-run electoral fraud will occur on a scale never seen before (here, here, and here) and Clinton will rely heavily on the gaggles of useful idiots produced by universities. Can this work for her? Maybe. I don't know what impact the new and anarchic world of social media will have on a campaign plan that seeks total control over messaging. I don't know if black and women voters will come out in numbers for her. I also don't know if the GOP will get its act together. There's all sorts of stuff I don't know.

It is called name recognition. This early it is working in her (and Jeb's) favor. Closer to the election, not so much. My biggest fear is that Trump will hang in there and split the Republican ticket. My personal prediction: Bill will scotch Hill's campaign with the same unforced errors he made last time. I firmly believe these were intentional, as Bill is far too savvy a politician to have made such amateurish mistakes accidentally. I don't think he wants her to be president.

The phone rings. A voice says (s)he is from some polling organization which sounds like a law firm. He wants just 10 minutes of your time, a few questions about politics, religion, income, your views on race, and what you think about gender assignment.

You have no way of verifying who is calling or that your answers will be anonymous. When you ask, "how do I know you are who you say you are?" the reply is "Well, I just am who I say I am".

How dumb does one have to be to continue this conversation? Quite dumb.

Supposedly Obama doesn't like the Clintons. Rumors abound that Obama wants some else to carry on his legacy, like Biden or Lizzy Warren.

I wonder if Obama will have the Justice Department prosecute Hillary for her secret e-mails and/or bribes paid to her byway of the Clinton Foundation? Maybe that's why Eric Holder resigned as Attorney General. Holder used to be close to the Clintons.

Our current political state is starting to resemble a episode of "House of Cards".

I'm going to take your post a bit out in my sqrt(-1) axis here.Hillary would win (if nominated) from a groundswell of votes from women who grew up in the US during the 50's, 60's, and 70's.Our culture has driven into this subset of voters that they are historically oppressed and that any woman 'going for the top' should be considered a trailblazer regardless of who the person *actually* is. (Though I honestly wonder what happens if Bruce Jenner runs for office?)I have several female relatives who pretty much despise Hillary and everything she does and doesn't stand for (mainly herself)... but they admit they will cross every line possible to make a woman President.The Dems have a lock on 2016-2024 if they *want* it... I'm wondering whether she's going to make it through the primaries. BHO doesn't want her... People in the party seem to understand that she wants to lead the 'Hillary Clinton Party' not the 'Democrat Party'.Yes, the GOP *could* level the playing field by pushing a female candidate (none reasonable in the waiting... sounds like Palin is disinterested), but it would have to be on the *top* of the ticket, such that this bloc got their thrill during the PRIMARY and became bored with it by the time the actual polls come around (since the next president will be female regardless).

I don't mean to say that this bloc of women will actually be active in campaigning for Hillary. I mean they will simply not consider voting for another candidate so long as it's "a man against a woman" in the actual vote.

Interesting post, Diplo. From a Canadian perspective, I also do not unerstand her campaign. It is non-existent but the Powers-That-Be do not probe her like and I can only assume she is running on the symbolism of First Woman President, and expects the US to genuflect.

"Readers: Insert off color joke here about the American people getting polled."

Okay ... but now if anybody gets offended blame the comment at August 10, 2015 3:07 PM for giving me the inspiration.

______

The set-up - y'all have in mind the very recent foofaraw over The Donald's remarks but not the most noted one ... the one Trump (allegedly) said about whoever the woman was, anyway the "down on her knees" remark?

That (supposedly) perfectly illustrative of "The War on Women." Skip ahead to the actual Presidential Debates._______

Hillary hurls, "You people are well known to be the Warriors on Women!" or whatever form it takes.

Republican, "If I'm elected the American People can damn well be confident No Woman will be on her knees in my Oval Office - and nobody for damn sure is gonna have to look for the definition of what is, is!"

If a woman must be elected this next cycle, how about Carly? She looked absolutely smashing in her silk suit on debate night (compared to Grandma in her Mao pantsuits). I mean, if you insist on drilling it down to gender, Carly at least has some fashion sense...I also happen to think that Carly will answer any question you ask her in an articulate and thought out way. But, that's just me. What do I know, I'm just a girl...

There is a subset of angry techies who are angry at Carly over the layoffs at HP when she was CEO. It doesn't matter to them that the dot com bubble had popped or that HP is still doing well under a CEO who is doing much the same thing Carly did. Most of them, I suspect , are Ron Paul voters anyway,

I would say it's a question of whether we want another President who has simply failed his or her way into that position, not a matter of anger.She has no actual 'success' in her history unless it's winning a primary nomination as the GOP senate candidate *IN CALIFORNIA*. :)Were she to be elected, she'd basically be the next Obama... at best.

You're not alone, diplomad. While I have seen all of the older James Bond movies (I am a big Ian Fleming fan, and the first few actually followed the books quite closely), I have never seen a Star Wars or X-Men movie.

Carly Fiorina is a great candidate (disciplined and on message), which of course, doesn't mean she would make a great (or even good) president. I do hope she stays in the debate as long as possible - her themes resonate with me.

Let's be fair to the little lady. (When have I not gone out of my way to be fair to Hillary! Clinton?)

The little woman is very accomplished as a bagman and political operative for her big lovable lug of a hubby. No reflection on her sex (or "gender"), "bagman" is just the name of an illegal--or as we now say, undocumented--trade.

Hubby, ever the gentleman, is returning the favor in no-trump, doubled, redoubled, and vulnerable. Or maybe it's an ev'rything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better moment.

Not that I'm proud of it, but my readiness most resembles that of a dog who, having been subjected to random unpredictable electric shocks, lies at the bottom of his cage waiting for the next. That's with regard to politics anyway. I do still enjoy fishing in the Gulf.

Lewis, if I may say so respectfully, you have erred. You are looking for coherence where there is none to be found, kosmos among chaos. The world of Hillary is one of winging it, of finding a testicle to step on to gain an extra inch of height. The Democrat view should not be graced with the relevance of a socialist ideology. They have nothing except a naked lust for dominance, a dominance achieved by manipulation and lies. Those polls you read are their stock in trade. The Republican rabble are an unfortunate, wretched reflection of them. Getting on your knees [as did Daniel in Babylon] will have a far greater effect than the ballot box. Lest we forget, the USA has not been given any promises that every other preceding great nation or empire received, and they 'are one with Babylon and Tyre...'

Best I can tell, the polls at this point seem to reflect partisan affiliation. The Democratic candidate has a 7 point advantage over the Republican candidate, give or take a few points derived from the Republican candidates precise properties (among which would be name recognition). Trump, running about 16% points behind Hildebeast, is the outlier.

The polls are unreliable, I would even go as far to suggest that they are susceptible to clintoon foundation cash.

What is indisputable is the power of ÈcelebrityÈ these days, the clintoon name resonates for some unknown reason. This phenomenon exists not only in the USA but also Canada where a nobody with no life achievement is running on name recognition and attracting the brain dead voter in droves.

I do not know how the serious contender can get his message out these days when most voters seem to regard entertainment tonight as a source for ÈnewsÈ.

Your pollsters are still indicating the Liberal Party is running third and that the New Democratic Party is in the lead. The Liberals have stuck themselves with a lapsed schoolteacher who's a serial academic dilettente (two abandoned degrees). That's more of a failure of peer review in the Liberal Party than it would be in the Democratic Party here, as you do not have peer review in this country, you have donor review.

This is going to make me sound like a conspiracy theorist but I think what we're seeing is a war between Hillary and Obama as much as Hillary and the GOP. Everything I've read suggests Obama hates the Clintons, and the feeling is probably mutual. At best, they recognize a truce.

I don't think Obama wants Hillary to be the Democratic nominee and the email story has all the marks of an Obama hit job, just as he did with Ryan in Chicago. The Clintons must know or suspect this, so it makes sense to keep a low profile while they wait to see what ammunition Obama has and how/when he will use it. In addition, I wonder if they are negotiating behind the scenes -- if so, what a duplicitous group that must be. Whatever is going on, my money is on Obama.

About Me

W. Lewis Amselem, long time US Foreign Service Officer; now retired; served all over the world and under all sorts of conditions. Convinced the State Department needs to be drastically slashed and reformed so that it will no longer pose a threat to the national interests of the United States.